Michigan residents and businesses are better off than they were five years ago today when power surges rapidly snaked through the nation's power grid, leaving more than 50 million powerless in a matter of minutes, utility officials say.

We aren't immune to another blackout, but new procedures, regulations and technology enhancements have lessened the chances.

"The blackout made it clear to everyone that reliable electricity is non-negotiable in our society," Consumers Energy spokesman Dan Bishop said.

A series of errors by two utility companies in Ohio started the chain reaction early in the afternoon of Aug. 14, 2003. It didn't take long before Michigan was affected. Eventually, millions in the Midwest, Northeast and Canada were without air conditioning for the rest of that hot day and without lights that evening.

In just 17 seconds, six of Jackson-based Consumers Energy's generating units  one-third of its available generation  tripped off.

"The impact was extensive and instantaneous," Bishop said.

Five minutes later, about 100,000 Consumers customers, or about 6 percent, were without power. More than 2 million Detroit Edison customers lost power at the same time.

In Jackson County, there were only isolated outages. The commercial area along Airport Road north of I-94, and O'Neill Drive south of I-94 reported the area's biggest outages.

Meijer and Kohl's both lost power, as well as the Somerset Center area.

Half of Consumers customers without power statewide had it restored within hours; the rest had it back by the following afternoon.

Bishop said the system worked as it was designed, with its equipment automatically shutting down to protect it from further damage.

Jon Jipping, executive vice president and chief operating officer of Novi-based ITC Holdings Corp. which owns 8,100 miles of transmission lines in the Lower Peninsula, including those previously owned by Consumers, said its system also operated as designed.

If it hadn't, he said, the blackout could have spread.

"We could have lost all of Michigan," he said.

It also could have physically damaged its system, which would have led to longer delays in getting power restored.

A 2003 report by state regulators said no evidence was found that Michigan utilities or transmission operators were responsible for the blackout. The amount of time people went without power and the number of those affected could have been lessened if there had been better communication worked into the system.

"There was just no warning in terms of what was going on," Jipping said.

There was only about a minute's time between the first warning ITC received that interconnections had exceeded emergency ratings and when the first one tripped, according to the report from the Michigan Public Service Commission.

Communication has been improved since then, Gilbert said.

The ability for people affected by the blackout to communicate also has been improved in the past five years.

Michelle Gilbert, public relations manager for Verizon Wireless, said many heard only busy signals when trying to call friends and relatives in the first few hours after the blackout hit, because the company experienced 150 percent greater call volume than during a typical busy hour.

"At that point, nobody knew what was going on," she said. "Everybody was trying to make a call at the same time."

Since then, Verizon has invested greatly in its network, she said. Last year, the company spent $145 million in the state and has spent $64.5 million so far this year. Much of that has been used to add new cell sites, additional capacity and to double the number of permanent generators at its cell sites.

Jipping said if there was another blackout, customers would be better off, but still might get a busy signal if so many made calls at the same time. She said in that situation, she encourages customers to send out text messages, because it requires less space on the network than a voice call and has a better likelihood of going through.